What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Thomas Jay Oord

I'm going to interrupt this Writing Tools flow with a writer's book review, partially to shake things up and partially because my article about it was printed last week in the Idaho Press-Tribune.

Thomas Jay Oord is a theology professor at Northwest Nazarene University. Wikipedia calls him the leading theologian on love working today, and his recent book, "The Uncontrolling Love of God," undoubtedly adds to that empire (if we give Wiki the benefit of the doubt). In this book, Oord says God's preeminent attribute is love. God wants the best for everyone, which leads to the problem of evil: Why is there evil in this world if God exists?

This question is what brings many to atheism, and it deserves all the books and thought it gets. Oord's solution, in short, is that there is evil because God simply cannot prevent it. He argues that were an all-loving God able to prevent evil from happening, He would. For more on this and Oord himself, read the article I wrote about him.

Now for how he wrote it: Philosophy and theology is infamous for being difficult to get through. A lot of that is because the writers are stereotypically long-winded, exhaustive in their arguments, prone to jargon, and boring.

Of those traits, I'd only assign one to Oord, that of being exhaustive. In the philosophy world, though, that is the correct way of doing things. People poke holes in your argument if you don't cover every single base in existence. Oord was close to doing this in his book, but he missed a couple by my reckoning. He didn't mention the devil, who I think should have at least been mentioned in a "He is irrelevant" fashion, and he never backed up the main assertion he was standing on, that is, that God's primary attribute is love. He used this as a building block and as a way to discount other theories, yet never gave any reasoning to support the claim.

While his argument may seem strong, it is a stone castle set on a cloud.

This is my main problem with the book. The writing itself is academic, easy to understand, and concise. He pulls the reader along through the first few chapters, which I especially enjoyed, with teasers of what is to come if they only hang on. He introduces examples at the beginning that he then refers back to throughout the entire book, which gave his concept a workable setting.

Please note that these are positive attributes in any sort of writing (maybe not always the academic part, but the rest of it): Write clearly and concisely. Use teasers or other methods to keep your reader going. Set your scene up early.

But don't ignore your foundation, especially when it comes to philosophy or theology. "Because it's what I believe with all my soul" doesn't cut it.